Putting the Ass in Class

It’s not often that something unbelievably revolutionary happens in sports, but today it did! I was watching Sports Center this evening and the soccer highlights came on. I understand the premises of soccer, I watch it during the World Cup, and I even played a little back in the day but I do not try to understand how the European football leagues work. Consequently, when soccer highlights come on I couldn’t quit frankly give a shit. But today was different.

The highlights were of what I think was a semi-final game between Inter Milan and Barcelona. Inter Milan won the first game in Milan by a two goals or something, so as long as they didn’t lose by more then one goal in Barcelona they would advance to the finals. (That concept makes no sense to me by the way but the INS and OUTS of European football is a blog for another day.) The highlights were rather dry to say the least. A dive here and a dive there. A yellow card here and a red card there. It was all rather uninteresting to me until the game ended with Barcelona winning 1-0, which meant Inter advanced to the finals. This I guess was a pretty big upset and Inter celebrated like it (rightfully so). What made these highlights so entertaining was that Barcelona being the classy team/fans/organization they are turned on the field’s sprinklers in order to put an end to Inters celebration. As I watched these events unfold on T.V. I thought to myself, “that is so un-classy it is awesome!” Then I decided all sports should do something similar whenever they lose an important game or match.

Baseball for example could also turn on the sprinklers when a team loses at home. For example, in 1992 the Blue Jays won the World Series in Atlanta and a pile up ensued in-between first base and the pitchers mound. If Ted Turner had the mentality of the Barcelona football team, he would have said, “Piss of Joe Carter” and flicked on the sprinklers.

Sprinklers are a great spoiler for outdoor sports but indoor sports pose a much more difficult problem to this concept. There are after all no sprinklers in hockey or basketball arenas. My solution is a flamethrower.

Pittsburg won the Stanley Cup in Detroit last year. If the Ilitch family were thinking, they would have strapped a flamethrower to the backs of all the little girls that come on the ice during T.V. time outs to scrape the snow off the ice around the benches and nets. Before Crosby had a chance to hoist the Cup the little girls could have been on the ice blasting flamethrowers everywhere and melted the ice. That would put a halt to a victory lap pretty damn quick I think.

Same solution applies to basketball. There’s no ice to melt but there is a lot of wood to burn. The Lakers win yet another championship while on the road. It’s a simple solution, flamethrowers on the backs of the cheerleaders and they torch the floor. “Oh, sorry Kobe you can’t celebrate this one because the building is on fire. Please evacuate the building calmly via the nearest exit and wait for further instruction.”

This is the solution to creating more rivalries in sports. No better way to let a team know you don’t like them then by burning your own arena down out of spite.